Rants & Raves ... Hotels and Hurricane Seasons & Kellie Pickler :)

I'm staying in a Ramada Hotel in Jacksonville this morning on the way north back to the South. It's a really nice Ramada...and I start this blog by giving it a heads up as you just never know what you will get on the road especially with chains like Ramada. This one is nice... clean... convenient for our needs and it has one of the nicest Whole Foods I've ever been to across the street!

http://www.ramada.com/hotels/florida/jacksonville/ramada-conference-center-jacksonville/hotel-overview

Luckily I'll be out of here before it hits 96 degrees later this week.

There is a connection here to weather and the hurricane season... hang with me and I'll explain.

I've spent a good amount of time on the road this year. I've stayed at the Ritz...I've stayed at a few Ramada Hotels this year as well. I've stayed at a boutique hotel in New Orleans. From big chain to Bed and Breakfast to a Boutique Hotel.. you just never are really sure what you get until you are there...  There are always reviews online and they differ greatly. We stayed in a Ramada in Baltimore for a friend's wedding and ... I've stayed in nicer Motel 6 Hotels when I was much younger. Here the rooms are clean, the toiletries are nice...the TV is good, the cable is good and the Internet works blessedly well. The complimentary breakfast is served in a real restaurant with enough options from hot to cold... even for vegetarians and kosher people there is a wide choice of yogurts and fresh fruit.  Before we found this gem on the route back home to North Carolina we stayed across the street at a poorly run La Quinta (we stayed there 3 times.. it's not like it was a random bad experience..) for more money with less service and oh it was horrible..

You see everyone has priorities and for us the big sell on this Ramada is that it is down the block from the Chabad House that my husband can go to for morning prayers. We can stop, relax, shop at Whole Foods for something to make when we get back to Raleigh and I can usually stop and have a walkabout in Savannah or St. Marys on the way back home. It would be nice to stay on the beach, but this is a bigger priority and I was just in Key West so really it's not the same beach. Nice, but different and Savannah is calling.

http://www.chabadjacksonville.org/

The Ritz at Buckhead is nice with all the amenities ... but it's in Buckhead and not on South Beach.

You know.. it's all about the view for me ...

A Ritz is a Ritz is a Ritz and I love them. They do everything right from the little Q-tips and make up removers to the real creamer for the coffee in the rooms. The bottled water with their name on it is a nice touch too... just so you never forget where you are if the shades are closed and you aren't sure if it's a beach view or a view of a modern metropolis. 

Reviews can be done online by people who work for Ramada or the Ritz or real live guests who felt the need to wax poetic on their stay or trash the place for their false advertising.

Take the Hollywood Beach Resort.. someone...anyone... please take that place and gut it... strip it and remodel it back to what it was meant to be. Currently it smells like an old age home or according to my husband who was raised in the hotel business... "an old Catskills Hotel" ...which was not a compliment it seems. After being closed all year when you first opened them..they had that horrible moldy smell that slams your throat of mold and mildew and eww which happens when you walk into the "Hollywood Beach Resort" 

Online you see this ad... after being offered 60% off for rooms...

DO NOT FALL FOR THE ADS... or the false advertising.. it stinks from mold...

old is not always good :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwF_W0bryX8

(cute pics of it in the Boom Time 1920s)

Read about Hollywood Florida and the 1920s...

http://joanmickelsonphd.wordpress.com/

Once upon the time it looked like this....

Now it looks like this:

False Advertising???

Some times you just have to see something up close and personal....

A nice relative put my mother-in-law up there and to be honest she did grow up in the Catskills at her mother's hotel and she sits by the pool...gets sun and well there is fresh air..  but it's just not what it used to be. Neither is her family hotel which is now a Kosher Orthodox Jewish Summer Camp Yeshiva..

The guests are no longer sunbathing but the students are still speaking Yiddish... and the food is probably very good... fresh clean air... somethings do remain the same.

So....although the Hollywood Beach Hotel may have survived the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane I doubt it would survive another hit by a Category 4 or 3 or 2 Hurricane. A shame because I love OLD big beautiful hotels like the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables..

And my family had tobacco stores in the old Tampa Bay Hotel...

Please someone get a clue and do for the Hollywood Beach Resort the same thing....

.....or knock it down.

I always hated when people knock down old landmarks. I cried when they tore down the Orange Bowl.......it's on my blog somewhere. I found it (I write in real time...) 

http://hurricaneharbor.blogspot.com/2007/11/writers-strike-orange-bowl-and-weather.html

I have to admit the new Miami Marlins Stadium is so beautiful... classy, fun.. incredible.

Maybe I'm wrong.. maybe sometimes you have to tear it down to make it better...

There was a family fun day at Marlins Stadium...rides, games... hot dogs & hamburgers.

Look at the city reflected in the mirrored walls... 

It is Miami today...not the Orange Bowl of my youth... 

but the tropical fun palace where my kids go to hang out.. enjoy Miami and root for the Marlins.

And... Chabad in Miami had a Great Parade with floats & music and fun...

http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=30313

Rants and raves... this is my day where I rant and rave on things I love.

I love Miami.

I love Florida.

I love the tropics and weather and sunshine and rain and hurricanes.

It's about ten days until the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season and everyone is reviewing it.. even though it has not yet begun. There are predictions and discussion on El Nino and Kelvin Waves. There are apologies for last year's busted forecast for a busy season and scaring the beejeebes out of everyone .... when in fact it was a weak, barely there season.

I'll tell you what there is.. 

There is a large, huge high pressure system clinging to and over South Florida. There is a HOT pocket of water off the Southeast Coast.. Meteorology students will explain all the reasons and thoughts on why it is so DRY THIS MAY in South Florida and why we will have a weak season with storms possibly forming close in to the coast and I will remind you it ONLY TAKES ONE.

Andrew and Betsy were in El Nino years... whether they were waning years or waxing years or for whatever the reason the RESULTS were the same. The proof was in the tropical pudding... a Major Hurricane. Tampa Bay oddly gets hit in slow years........watch out this year Tampa Bay. Again it's not always about numbers but about where you are when a hurricane makes landfall. 

I said flooding would be a problem this Spring and some sweet young meteorology student told me that the models show this will not be an epic year for tornadoes or flooding. Sweet... but if your town is the one underwater it IS epic for you! If your town was blown away off the beaten track of twisters... it was memorable. Europe is having memorable flooding... the Blue Danube is flooded... Ames had tornado warnings and flooding rains. Seriously?

http://www.weather.com/safety/floods/balkans-flooding-bosnia-serbia-croatia-belgrade-20140519

I was right on the floods and I was right on the odd tornado season and I will be right on this being an odd hurricane season. You can take that to the bank. It may not be 2005... but it will be 2014 and somewhere, someone is going to have to deal with tropical weather. 

The water is heating up off the Southeast Coast...that worries me more than having a big Cape Verde Season with storms curving gracefully out to sea .. one fish storm after another swimming away vs hurricanes forming close in swimming onshore like beached tropical whales!

The 1935 Hurricane... Labor Day...Worst Day in Keys Hurricane History formed close in.. intensified fast and never looked back. The reasons why are important for researchers.. the lesson is the same. It happens.

A bunch of weak tropical storms and one really strong hurricane.

To quote Wikipedia and remember what I said about "ODD"

"The 1935 Atlantic hurricane season ran from June 16 through October 31, 1935. The 1935 season featured below average activity, but it was eventful. A Category 1 hurricane in the Caribbean killed an estimated 2,150 people in the Greater Antillesand Central America. A Category 3 storm hit central Cuba and grazed Miami. An extratropical hurricane hit Newfoundland. The third tropical cyclone of the season struck the Florida Keys in southern Florida as a Category 5 hurricane; it remains the strongest landfalling hurricane in the United States (and anywhere in the Atlantic basin).^[1] A rare November hurricane also affected the Miami—Fort Lauderdale area."

Remember it only takes one or two to make it through during a strong MJO event in an EL Nino Year...

Click on the link... see how close to land the 1935 Labor Day Storm formed...and then... it hit land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1935_Labor_Day_hurricane_track.png

Something to think on...

If you have to stay in Jax... check out the Ramada here... if you want to stay at the Ritz... checkout the one on South Beach.

http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/SouthBeach/Dining/TheDilidoBeachClub/Default.htm

If you want to know how the 2014 Hurricane Season turns out... read my blog.. watch TWC... keep in touch on www.spaghettimodels.com... go on Facebook. It happens in real time much like American Idol.. you don't really know for sure who will be a star and who will be forgotten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFQl-rrDryM

And....she made good....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XdZtYG1ms

Besos Bobbi

Ps... What will happen this Hurricane Season? Keep watching... keep reading...